MUSICAL CHILDHOOD

As early as I can remember, I have been stirred by music.  In my early childhood, my only music source was listening to the radio (yes, I'm that old).  I was instinctively drawn to the aural and emotional expression found in music ranging from 1930s-40s big band to classical to pop standards of the era.

It was my great good fortune to attend a tiny rural school whose principal, a rancher and Renaissance man named Ira Perkins, devoted himself to a well-rounded education for his students ~ including academic studies, dance, physical activity, and both listening to and performing music.  How proud I was as a first-grader to don the purple cape and hat of our small band, whose modest instruments included recorders, triangles, and percussion.

Later, in a different community with a larger school, I started singing and playing instruments in fifth grade ~ passing up clarinet and baritone horn in favor of the French horn.  Music was always running through my head in quiet moments, the rhythm and melody of my young life.

Along the way I subconsciously began to understand important relationships ~ how the length of notes compared to other notes meant something, how certain pairs of notes played together produced a pleasing harmony, other pairs not so much.  Without realizing it, I was learning that math is one of music's foundations ~ duration, pitch, tempo.  I believe that my early experience in music reinforced how well I did in math and reading, and sensitized me to the world of sound ~ bird calls, the wind in the trees, the nuances of human voices speaking, learning languages ~ as well as to spatial relationships, hand-eye coordination, color, and emotion.

There is new evidence supporting this belief.  Researchers at Northwestern University have found that "a little music training in childhood goes a long way in improving how the brain functions in adulthood when it comes to listening and the complex processing of sound .... Compared to peers with no musical training, adults with one to five years of musical training as children have enhances brain responses to complex sounds, making them more effective at pulling out the fundamental frequency of the sound signal.  The fundamental frequency, which is the lowest frequency in sound, is crucial for speech and musical perception, allowing recognition of sounds in complex and noisy auditory environments .... Prior research on highly trained musicians and early bilingualists revealed that enhanced brain stem responses to sound are associated with heightened auditory perception, executive function, and auditory communication skills."

So one doesn't have to be a musician for years and years to reap the benefits of musical training.  Equally importantly, it seems to me, though maximum benefit is conferred by an early start in music, it's never too late to begin.  During my adult years I learned to play classical guitar, dulcimer, and African drums.  Rudimentary piano playing was present throughout.  Each new experience enhanced my listening and understanding.

Here is a wee treat for listeners of any experience level ~ Arthur Rubenstein's 1965 performance of Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat minor, Opus 9, Number 2.  Enjoy.

MATH ILLITERACY

Following up on yesterday's post on science phobia ~ science and math are intimately intertwined (math being the language of science).  So it is understandable (and regrettable) that a poor understanding of one field implies the probability of a poor understanding of the other.  This has been confirmed emphatically in recent years, as American students' science and math performance has fallen, while the performance of students from other developed and developing nations has risen to overtake us.  I fully support young people and adults of all nations becoming literate in science and math.  I do not support American young people and adults falling by the wayside, as others pass us by.  We have too much to contribute.

One reason for this downhill slide may be the very technology which our prosperity provides.  When I was young, our tools were a pencil, a piece of paper, and our minds.  We practiced until (a) we had the multiplication tables memorized, (b) we began to grasp the abstract concepts behind each operation, and (c) many of us could perform the math in our heads.  The closest we came to having technological tools were a compass, ruler, and protractor in geometry, and a slide rule in trigonometry (state of the art in those days, used by engineers in the space program).

Those days are gone.  Today schools allow students to rely on sophisticated hand-held calculators.  Punch in the numbers, and up pops the result.  What's wrong with that?  Just this ~ in a learning setting, students need to understand HOW math works in order to grasp fundamental concepts, and in order to have a foundation for asking intelligent questions.  In the classroom, a calculator is a crutch which discourages real learning.

When I was a teacher (math, algebra, biology, environmental studies), no calculators were allowed.  Further, I required my students to show their work on paper, not just write down an answer.  I had to know that they understood the process by which they arrived at that answer.  Otherwise it could be just a lucky guess, or cheating.  That's how I learned math, that's how I taught math.

Some of the best math teachers in the nation are returning to this very approach to learning, according to Konstantin Kakaes in a Slate article called Why Johnny Can't Add Without a Calculator.  One such teacher, Vern Williams, "doesn't just prefer his old chalkboard to the high-tech version.  His kids learn from textbooks that are decades old ~ not because they can't afford new ones, but because Williams and an handful of his like-minded colleagues know the old ones are better .... His preferred algebra book, he says, is 'in-your-face algebra.  They give amazing outstanding examples.  They teach the lessons.'  The modern textbooks, he says, contain hundreds of extraneous, confusing and often outright wrong examples, instead of presenting mathematical ideas in a coherent way.  The examples bloat the books to thousands of pages and disrupt the logical flow of ideas."

What about tech tools like calculators?  "According to an October 2011 report, 89 percent of high school math teachers think their students are ready for college-level mathematics.  But only 26 percent of post-secondary [university] teachers think the students are ready once they get there.  This shortfall in mathematical preparation for college-bound students has existed for a long time, but it is being exacerbated by the increasing use of technology.  College-level math classes almost never use graphing calculators (see image above), while high school classes invariably do.  College professors want their students to understand abstract concepts.  Technology advocates claim their products help teach students such abstractions, but in practice they simply don't."

And here's a point I stressed in yesterday's post ~ "Math and science can be hard to learn, and that's OK.  The proper job of a teacher is not to make it easy, but to guide students through the difficulty by getting them to practice and persevere.  'Some of the best basketball players on Earth will stand at that foul line and shoot foul shots for hours and be bored out of their minds,' says Williams.  Math students, too, need to practice foul shots ~ adding fractions, factoring polynomials.  And whether or not the students are bright, ' once they buy into the idea that hard work leads to cool results,' Williams says, 'you can work with them.'

"Educational researchers often present a false dichotomy between fluency and conceptual reasoning.  But as in basketball, where shooting foul shots helps you learn how to take a fancier shot, computational fluency is the path to conceptual understanding.  There is no way around it."

Note ~ the best reading and mathematics learning software packages have no measurable effect on test scores.  Sloppy studies commissioned by the purveyors of such software, folks who have a financial stake in the outcome, are unfortunately taken at face value by many teachers and administrators around the country.  No rigorous study has found technology to be effective in enhancing students' learning of math.  Just the opposite is true ~ math software is limited, narrow, and does not allow for questions or for alternative, equally valid paths to a solution.

"Computer technology, while great for many things, is just not much good for teaching, yet.  Paradoxically, using technology can inhibit understanding how it works.  If you learn how to multiply 37 by 41 using a calculator, you only understand the black box.  [You don't understand the process of multiplication.]  Maybe one day software will be smart enough to be useful, but that day won't be any time soon, for two reasons.  The first is that education, especially of children, is as much an emotional process as an imparting of knowledge ~ there is no technological substitute for a teacher who cares.  The second is that education is poorly structured.  Technology is bad at dealing with poorly structured concepts.  One question leads to another leads to another, and the rigid structure of computer software has no way of dealing with this.  Software is especially bad for smart kids, who are held back by its flexibility.

"The real shortfall in math and science education can be solved not by software or gadgets but by better teachers .... The new technology makes it easier than ever for teachers to avoid learning the subject .... A teacher who plans his own lecture is forced toward mastery of the material, but one who downloads a PowerPoint presentation doesn't have to know anything beyond how to download the presentation. It is a miracle of efficiency ~ empty calories."

When I taught remedial summer math classes, the first task was the students' taking a placement test.  If their results showed a gap in understanding first-year algebra, or long division, or fractions, that's where that individual's summer work began.  As predictable as the sunrise was the inevitable complaint, "But I already TOOK that."  I had to explain that the student may have been exposed to it at some point, but they didn't learn it.  And without the foundation, they would not have the tools for more advanced work.  So, we practiced.  And practiced.  And with luck and perseverance, at some point comes the reward which makes every true teacher's heart leap ~ that moment when you can actually see a light go on over the student's head, when they really, really get it, inside their own brains.  No calculator needed.

IMPROVING BRAIN FUNCTION

As I've grown older, I notice that I sometimes have to struggle to recall a name, or a particular word.  Sometimes at home I'll walk from one room to the next, then forget what I was going to do there.  A decline in the brain's memory function is something that most of us experience.  But it need not be inevitable.  A report in the journal Neuroscience finds that "Education [alone] won't save your brain.  PhDs are as likely as high school dropouts to experience memory loss with old age.  Don't count on your job, either.  Those with a complex or demanding career may enjoy a limited advantage, but those benefits quickly dwindle after retirement.

"Engagement is the secret to success.  Those who are socially, mentally, and physically stimulated reliably show better cognitive performance with a brain that appears younger than its years .... Older people also continue to accumulate knowledge and to use what they know effectively, often to very old ages."

So there is hope for us all.  Engagement, stimulation.  I read voraciously, do crossword puzzles, play chess and Scrabble, and compose daily blog posts.  However, I'm not as socially engaged as many people, nor do I get as much exercise as I would like.  My goals are thus clear.

Here's something else to think about.  Brandon Keim in Wired Science writes that "To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language.  A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived .... Psychologists say human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought, one that's systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that's fast, unconscious and emotionally charged .... it's plausible that communicating in a learned language forces people to be deliberate, reducing th role of potentially unreliable instinct.  Research also shows that immediate emotional reactions to emotively charged words are muted in non-native languages, further hinting at deliberation."

This ties in neatly with the first report, since learning and using a second (or third, or fourth) language stimulates our cognitive abilites.  Those people I know who are bilingual or trilingual tend to be more influenced by reason, and less by instinct.  Intuition is still valuable, I believe, but only if it is informed by fact and by diverse experience ~ the more, the better.

Here is a link to a website called Luminosity, which claims to "improve your brain health and performance" with a training program to enhance memory and attention.  I have not yet tried it, so I cannot attest to its effectiveness.  But it seems to me that we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Adios por ahora, y buena suerte.

EDUCATION AT RISK ~ REDSHIRTING

I've written in the past about education ~ here is a list of some of those posts.  The issues are many and varied, and of importance to us all.  How each of us develops is (in part) a result of the quality and quantity of our parents' education, as well as our own.  As adults, we are in a position to favorably influence the development of our children, and their children, and their children, by informing ourselves about what is going on in our schools, and working to change what needs changing.


Perhaps the most fundamental facet of education which needs reform is the quality of our teachers.  For too long, mediocre teachers have detracted from children's learning simply because they didn't make any gross mistakes, and held their jobs long enough to attain seniority.  Under the seniority system, in tough economic times (like now) when budgets are tightened and faculty are trimmed back, it is those with least seniority ~ regardless of the quality of their teaching ~ who lose their jobs first.  It's called LIFO, or Last In, First Out, and it is a national scandal.  Here is a brief video which explains the process.


Naturally, many high-quality, innovative teachers also attain seniority.  But not enough.  Why in the world would we want to retain ho-hum teachers for our children, when we can assure the best possible quality in all our teachers by the simple expedient of abandoning the seniority system entirely, replacing it with job retention based on performance?  A few states have done just that, realizing that when layoffs are based on seniority, our students lose great teachers.  Here is a map, color-coded to show states at high risk of losing effective teachers due to seniority (red), states at moderate risk (yellow), and states at low risk (green).  You can click on your own state to learn the details, and how to take action ~ by contacting state legislators to demand that layoff decisions be based on teacher performance.  That performance can be measured by the learning that takes place among students (in the form of test scores), by peer review, by comparison with teacher evaluations across one's state, by improvement in one's own teacher evaluations over time, by annual attendance at in-service seminars and classes to assure one's currency in the field one is teaching, and yes, by the assessments of one's students.  Such a holistic approach should assure the retention of the best-performing teachers in lean times, regardless of age or job longevity.


Here's a curious side to education which I recently encountered.  It seems that many parents are delaying their children's entry into kindergarten by a year, on the theory that an added year's maturity will give their children a scholastic edge, and an edge in later life.  The practice is called redshirting.  I have mixed feelings.  When I was that age, the rural school district in which I lived didn't even offer kindergarten.  My first experience with school was first grade.  In Montana, the year you start school is based on the calendar year in which you were born (as opposed to the academic year).  I was born in March, so was marginally older than most of my 1947-born classmates.  But (after I'd changed schools several times) they had the benefit of an extra year's socializing in kindergarten, something I felt self-conscious about.  


I'm not certain that intentionally working the system so that your child is a year or more older than his/her classmates is exactly fair to everyone.  Academic advantage aside, what about social skills?  What about the size and maturity difference?  I have no ready answers, only questions.  You can watch the 60 Minutes segment and read the transcript here, and draw your own conclusions.


Then consider the opposite age displacement ~ those children who either start school at an earlier age, or who skip one or more grades in school due to their abilities.  Some kids experience disorientation and (for a time) feelings of insecurity when cast among classmates a year older.  Others, particularly those who are autodidacts, don't notice or don't care.  Andrea Kuszewski, who provided the redshirting link, is one of the latter.  

EDUCATION AND PERFORMANCE

I've been gathering resources relating to how we think, how the process is changing, and what we can do to enhance our mental functioning.  Here are two items of interest ~


In A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond, Patricia Cohen writes about the apparent decline in creativity, and learning capacity after about the age of 40, and memory after about the age of 50 ~ and how that perceived decline is coming under new scrutiny as we learn more about the nature of intelligence.  "Many researchers believe that human intelligence or brainpower consists of dozens of assorted cognitive skills, which they commonly divide into two categories.  One bunch falls under the heading 'fluid intelligence", the abilities that produce solutions not based on experience, like pattern recognition, working memory and abstract thinking, the kind of intelligence tested in IQ examinations.  These abilities tend to peak in one's 20s.


'Crystallized intelligence, by contrast, generally refers to skills that are acquired through experience ans education, like verbal ability, inductive reasoning and judgment.  While fluid intelligence is often considered largely a product of genetics, crystallized intelligence is much more dependent on a bouquet of influences, including personality, motivation, opportunity, and culture .... One of the brain's most powerful tools is its ability to quickly scan a vast storehouse of templates for relevant information and past experience to come up with a novel solution to a problem.  In this context, the mature brain is especially well equipped, which is probably why we still associate wisdom with age.


" .... Older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge.  Most important, they discover that despite a decline in fluid intelligence, complicated reasoning that relates to people, moral issues or political institutions improved with age."


So the question becomes, can anything be done about the decline in fluid intelligence with age?  The author describes several studies which explore this very question, and "The most consistent results involved education.  All other things being equal, the more years of school a subject had, the better he or she performed on every mental test.  Up to age 75, the studies showed, people with college degrees performed on complex tasks like less-educated individuals who were 10 years younger."


It doesn't end there.  Even absent a college degree, "Into middle age and beyond, people could make up for educational disadvantages encountered earlier in life.  Everyone in the study who regularly did more to challenge their brains ~ reading, writing, attending lectures or completing word puzzles ~ did better on fluid intelligence tests than their counterparts who did less."


Another study showed that "adults, particularly men, with low levels of education could also improve mental function by using a computer.  Although researchers are not sure why, they speculate that computers require users to switch mental gears more frequently or process information in a new way, which quickens reaction time."


Finally, researchers "noticed other similarities among people with the strongest cognitive skills.  Senior citizens who performed as well as young adults in fluid intelligence tended to have four characteristics in addition to having a college degree and regularly engaging in mental workouts ~ they exercised frequently;  they were socially active, frequently seeing friends and family, volunteering or attending meetings;  they were better at remaining calm in the face of stress; and they felt more in control of their lives."


More research remains to be done.  For now, it is encouraging to understand that both college education and continuing education can help keep us sharp well into our golden years.


In What You (Really) Need To Know, Lawrence H. Summers suggests that while part of universities' function is to keep alive man's greatest creations, passing them on from generation to generation, it is interesting to speculate how the university experience might be different if the educational system is altered to reflect the structure of society and our evolving understanding of how people learn.  He offers the following "guesses and hopes ~


~  Education will be more about how to process and use information, and less about imparting it.
~  An inevitable consequence of the knowledge explosion is that tasks will be carried out with far more collaboration.
~  New technologies will profoundly alter the way knowledge is conveyed.
~  'Active learning classrooms' (which cluster students at tables with rearrangeable furniture and integrated technology) will help professors interact with their students through the use of media and collaborative experiences.
~  The world is much more open .... and it will be essential that students have international experiences.
~  Courses of study will place more emphasis on the analysis of data.


"A good rule of thumb for many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could."  


To be continued tomorrow ....

THE STUDENTS ~ THE TEACHERS

Thankfully, there are signs that all the feel-good "everyone's a winner" philosophy in education has run its course.  Recently the Washington Post published an article titled In Schools, Self-esteem Is Losing Favor to Rigor, Finer-Tuned Praise.  Here are a few relevant exerpts demonstrating why we haven't been doing our kids any favors in recent years ~


"For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement.  The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates ~ but few, if any, academic gains.  Now, an increasing number of teachers are weaning themselves from what some call empty praise.  Drawing on psychology and brain research, these educators aim to articulate a more precise, and scientific, vocabulary for praise that will push children to work through mistakes and take on more challenging assignments.


" .... A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities.  As schools ratchet up academic standards for all students, new buzzwords are 'persistence', 'risk-taking', and 'resilience' ~ each implying more sweat and strain than fuzzy, warm feelings.


" .... studies have found that praising children for intelligence ("You're so clever!) also backfires.  In study after study, children rewarded for being smart become more likely to shy away from hard assignments that might tarnish their star reputations.  But children praised for trying hard and taking risks tend to enjoy challenges and find greater success.  Children also perform better in the long term when they believe that their intellect is not a birthright but something that grows and develops as they learn new things."


Speaking from my experience as a student at secondary and university levels, and also from my experience as a teacher of high school students, I welcome this news.  Everyone in a learning situation (regardless of age) welcomes challenge, so long as they are being encouraged and treated with respect by an informed and enthusiastic teacher.  Just as we master a physical skill by starting out with the basics and gradually raising the bar for performance, so we also master intellectual challenge by imposing high expectations accompanied by training and praise for achievement.  That was certainly the approach during my education, and I thrived on it.  One might even go out on a limb and suggest that the narcissistic "high self-esteem" movement is responsible for the sharp decline in learning by U.S. students compared to students of other nations, in every subject from language to science to history to math.


Naturally, the quality of teaching is critical.  There are many fine, committed teachers and professors out there, people who stay current to developments in their fields, and who invest thought and creativity in their classroom performance.  As with any profession, there are also a number of slackers, teachers who are content to skate by, teaching from the same lesson plans year after year ~ and who are rarely aware of the dulling effect this attitude has on their students.  I'm a firm believer in merit-based promotion and the complete elimination of the tenure system.  Teachers' performance should be reviewed annually, based on the learning that took place in their classrooms, as well as on their furthering their own skills and knowledge base through attending in-service trainings, seminars, and taking advanced university classes.  And ALL teachers should be paid well, on a sliding scale based on merit.


Further, political and religious agendas must be removed from the classroom.  School administrations and school boards need to develop the cajones to stand up to pressure from parents' groups which seek to impose their own cultural prejudices on what is being taught.  This is true in the arts, in literature, and especially in the sciences.  I just learned of a national organization, the National Center for Science Education, whose mission is to free science teachers to do what they were hired to do ~ teach science.  Not religious fundamentalism, not conservative or liberal ideology.  Science.  


"The National Center for Science Education has been defending the teaching of evolution since Edwards vs. Aguillard, the 1987 Supreme Court decision that declared the teaching of creationism an unconstitutional promotion of religion .... the organization played a critical role in the Dover case, which blocked the teaching of creationism's descendent, intelligent design.


"Although the organization's title refers to science education generally, evolution has been the primary area of science that has been under attack for reasons that have nothing to do with the latest research.  But over the last several years, that's changed as more and more bills have been introduced that target both evolution and climate change .... [the NCSE] is broadening its support of students and educators to include climate change.


" .... the NCSE's work with teachers on evolution made them aware that teaching climate science was becoming controversial ... What they found were some clear parallels between evolution and climate science.  Just as the controversy over evolution takes place within the public but not among scientists .... There's not a debate going on within the scientific community about whether the climate is getting warm and whether people have a great deal to do with this.


" .... There are also parallels in terms of motivation.  The basis for antievolution is ideological.  There's also an ideological basis for anti-global warming, it just happens to be a political and economic ideology."


It is a sad indicator of the insecure faith in one's own religious beliefs that certain fundamentalist evangelicals feel compelled to impose their religion on others.  In principle, doing so is rather pathetic and often annoying.  In the public schools, there is absolutely no justification for ideology hampering or corrupting the teaching of science.  If you want to teach religion, do it in church or in the home.

SPORTS CON GAME

This burns my grits. The chart above shows a comparison of the salaries paid to faculty at U.S. doctoral-granting universities. Please note that as one descends down the chain of command, salaries decrease accordingly, from president/CEO to provost to dean to tenured professor to un-tenured professor to grad student. But wait ~ that last entry. Football coaches earn an average salary that nearly equals all the other categories combined. What?

Colleges and universities are in the business of educating students, preparing them for entry into their chosen careers. It has been thus for centuries, long before college sports became so insanely popular (approximately coinciding with the advent of television) ~ and so insanely corrupt. I'm talking financial corruption, and I'm talking ethical corruption. The lopsided homage paid to sports at our institutions of higher learning is all out of proportion to their importance in turning out educated citizens.

It's all a con game. Millions of young men and women of dream of parlaying their high school and college sports performance into the hope of being chosen as a member of a professional team ~ but the odds of success are tens of thousands to one. The media, the NCAA, sports fans, parents, college administrators, and the players themselves are willing participants, because no one wants to be the first to point out that the emporer has no clothes.

As with nearly any other logical disjunct in life, when there is a troubling situation, follow the money. College sports have evolved to become a major source of income ~ in attendance revenues, in alumni support for universities which field winning teams, in product endorsements, in media coverage. Where does all that cash go? Is it disbursed to academic research, to expanding libraries, to attracting promising young scholars in the sciences or the arts? Not really. It goes toward further enhancing the sports program, to outrageous salaries for coaches, to full ride scholarships and other (often hidden) benefits for players, to newer and larger stadiums, to drumming up fan support. A self-perpetuating cycle which does not serve the essential purpose of higher education, the raison d'etre for colleges and universities in the first place. This is totally FUBAR.

I can hear the counter-argument ~ college is merely a natural level on the progressive pyramid of advancement within a sport (see illustration below). But that holds no water, given the tiny percentage of players who will actually make it to the pros. It is a very lucrative fantasy, but it only comes true for a tiny percentage of the dreamers. The rest are merely pawns.

To purify the situation, to return our universities to their original purpose of education in both one's specialized field and in the broader liberal arts, not to mention returning college sports to their true standing as an amateur (unpaid) endeavor, I propose the elimination of scholarships for players, and the restructuring of salaries for coaches down to the level of tenured or untenured professors. If you're a student, you're there to learn. Playing on a team should be a privilege which is subservient to your broader education, not your primary reason for being in school. Budgets for sports programs should not exceed the budget of the smallest academic department in a given university, and sports financial proceeds should be deposited into the university's general fund, to which all departments would have access for meeting expenses.

Radical thoughts, bound to raise a howl of protest among sports fanatics. So think about this ~ what are college sports good for? Physical fitness and promoting a spirit of fair play? Hardly. They serve as a symbolic substitute for the human propensity for waging war. We get to go out there and "kill" the enemy, engage in multiple battles to prove our supremacy. On that level, we can be real and say sure, better a symbolic war than a real one. But keep money out of it. Better to foster equal enthusiasm for scientific research, for the arts, for turning out educated, well-rounded adults who understand quadratic equations and ecology and music and art and Spanish, above and beyond being able to quote the playing statistics of the next team on the playing schedule.

RETHINKING EDUCATION

As both a lifelong student and a former teacher, I am intensely interested in what goes on in the classrooms of our schools and universities. In the U.S., the public school system is broken, which handicaps those who go on to college. Compared to their peers in most developed nations and even many developing nations, American young people are culturally, mathematically, and scientifically illiterate. Things have gone downhill since I graduated from high school in 1965, and even since I graduated from college in 1986 (long story). Why is this?

My perception, based on anecdotal experience and on a number of studies, is that we as a nation have learned to settle for the mediocre, rather than setting high standards for every student and for every teacher. Too many students are willing to skate by, taking the minimum number of classes and achieving the minimum grades necessary to graduate. Too many teachers are equally willing to skate by, falling back on habitual, non-creative teaching methods and failing to improve their own skills. Too many school boards, and boards of regents, are complicit by allowing failing students to move on to the next grade ~ even going so far as to falsify test scores so that their school won't look bad (witness the systematic cheating done by over 200 Atlanta school administrators, principals, and teachers to artificially raise student test scores over the past decade, as described on the PBS Newshour).

It all revolves around teachers ~ how they are trained, how they are evaluated, how they are allowed to become calcified in their work. Jeanne Garbarino reports that in New York State, everyone is made a stakeholder in how well or poorly students receive an education. For teachers, this has translated into being evaluated based on (a) standardized tests for teachers, (b) locally selected measures of student achievement, and (c) other measures of teacher and principal effectiveness. In my opinion that's a good start, but only a start. While collective bargaining for pay and benefits should be maintained, academic tenure at all levels should be abolished. Every instructor should be evaluated every year on his/her teaching skills, knowledge of the subject, currency and participation in refresher courses, and especially on the performance of students. Grading should be standardized across the nation, and monitorred by independent oversight to guard against fraud. Standards for both students and teachers should be elevated, not diminished.

"The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done -- men who are creative, inventive, and discoverers." ~ Jean Piaget

Thus begins The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience, a critique and a love song by the ever-articulate Andrea Kuszewski. Drawing upon her own childhood story, and upon the general state of education in our nation, Kuszewski presents two hypotheses for why we are experiencing system failure, and what can be done about it, along with supporting evidence.

"Hypothesis I: Teaching and encouraging kids to learn by rote memorization and imitation shapes their brains and behavior, making them more inclined towards linear thinking, and less prone to original, creative thinking.

"Hypothes II: Teaching kids to ask questions and think about problems before receiving the solution encourages more non-linear, divergent and creative thinking, to produce better innovators, problem-solvers, and problem-finders."

I couldn't agree more. Teaching which is engaged, enthused, informed, and challenging, is infectious. Learning becomes absorbing and fun. Kuszewski goes on to describe a study done by Dr. Robert Steinberg, the goal of which was "to find out if it was possible to develop both teaching and testing methods that were a better measure of the quality and quantity of material learned over a college course. He wanted to see if by teaching creatively -- both using creative teaching methods, as well as teaching students to think creatively about a problem -- then testing for practical application of the material learned, if more learning took place .... His results? A huge win .... On average, the students in the test group (the ones taught using creative methods) received higher final grades in the college course than the control group (taught with traditional methods and assessments). But, just to make things fair, he also gave the test group the very same analytical-type exam that the regular students got (a multiple choice test), and they scored better on that test as well. That means they were able to transfer the knowledge they gained using creative, multimodal teaching methods, and score higher on a completely different cognitive test of achievement on that same material.

" .... So the good news is, the brain is plastic, and these types of thinking patterns can still be taught, even into adulthood. It may take more work to break habits of behavior the longer you've engaged in them, but the brain can still adapt to new ways of thinking.

"Here's something to consider: those last few studies involved college students. Can you imagine how much increased learning would occur over a lifetime if we started utilizing some of these same teaching principles in grade school? .... Rule-breaking, to an extent, should be tolerated and encouraged, and yes -- even taught. Teaching how and when to break rules and take creative risks isn't a neat and clean process -- it can get a little messy and errors will be made. But we should all be aware of this from the beginning and reward smart risk-taking, even if it leads to an error.

"You need to make mistakes in order to learn. If you never know why an answer is wrong, you will never be able to come across a novel situation and make a good decision on how to act. Making errors and struggling through problems is what increases cognitive ability. Spending time pondering a question, weighing choices, thinking about whether an answer fits, and why -- this is what drives positive change. That's what learning is. That's what our education should be focusing on."

Education reform is like the weather ~ everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it. Given America's gross negligence of the next generation of citizens, and given our falling behind so many other nations in education, health care, scientific exploration, and quality of life, it is far past time for casting aside our apathy. The pride we take in being the leaders of the world in education, science and math proficiency, technological innovation, high quality manufactured goods, and practitioners of freedom, is being rapidly overshadowed by our own tolerance for mediocrity. And it all starts in school. Your brain ~ use it or lose it.

Here's an example of a small step in the right direction ~ Five Amazing Games That Add a Third Dimension to Learning. Vast strides can be made by a single motivated teacher who is willing to engage in lateral thinking. My kind of role model.

WEALTH & HAPPINESS / LASER

WEALTH & HAPPINESS. Does having enough money really buy happiness? There are proponents and opponents to the supposition, but not much scientific research. Until now. If you are a child growing up in poverty, the stakes are dire. Studies reveal a "link between lower socioeconomic status and lower hippocampal gray matter density [the hippocampus is that part of the human brain which is crucial to memory]." The graph below (click to enlarge) reveals the correlation between the percentage of children with serious mental or behavioral difficulties, and poverty level, broken down by age groups. Within each age group the trend is clear -- the more impoverished you are as a child, the more you struggle with cognitive and social performance. This is, of course, not the child's fault, nor in most cases the fault of the parents. We as a society are responsible for the health, education, and well-being of ALL our members. To the extent that poverty exists and hinders our children, to that extent is our society a failure.






As adults, the connection between wealth and happiness is less clear. Yes, having money makes life undeniably easier. But it also can substitute one set of worries for another. Daniel Kahneman suggests that just as education is only one component in achieving higher income, so higher income is only one component in people's satisfaction in their lives. He refers to our preoccupation with money as a "focusing delusion" -- "Nothing is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it." Thus it is that middle income and even poor people, while they undeniably contend with life struggles the wealthy don't face, can achieve a state of contentment simply by focusing on what is good in their lives, and appreciating the love and personal achievements already present. As with so much else in our lives, happiness is largely a result of what we choose to notice and to value.
LASER. On this day in 1960, American physicist Theodore Maiman operated the first working laser at the Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. The word "laser" is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". The emitted laser light possesses high spatial and temporal coherence -- that is, it exhibits very little diffusion or scatter over distance and time. Imagine a flashlight beam -- the light spreads very quickly in a conical shape, becoming weaker and illuminating less with distance. Now imagine a laser beam -- the light maintains its pencil-thin diameter over great distances -- so great that lasers are used to measure the distance from the earth to the moon, with accuracy measured in millimeters.
In the half century since the first lasers, they have become as ubiquitous as Velcro. Their uses include (but are not limited to) bloodless surgery and eye treatement in medicine, cutting and welding in industry, marking targets and acting as heat/light weapons in the military, latent fingerprint detection in law enforcement, spectroscopy and interferometry in scientific research, printing and optical disks (CDs and DVDs) in consumer goods, light displays, and cosmetic skin treatment. A more precise and versatile tool is hard to imagine. Check out the Wikipedia article for a comprehensive description of the history, design, modes of operation, and types of lasers in use today.










BONUS. Two of my favorite creatures are black cats and barn owls. Imagine my delight when I discovered this video showing a barn owl and a black cat who are best friends. I'd wager that both were very young when they first discovered each other, and perhaps were even raised together. How else to account for the apparent short-circuiting of each predator's hunting instincts in favor of play? Whatever the explanation, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

MARCH MADNE$$ / NUCLEAR D / MILEPOST

MARCH MADNE$$. Each year during the month of March, the NCAA national collegiate basketall championship tournament is televised across the U.S. -- second only to football's Super Bowl in viewership and revenue generated. A Frontline segment, Money and March Madness (view here) did some investigative reporting, and revealed a sordid tale of greed and injustice. The Washington Post summarizes nicely --

"Generations of college athletes have generated revenue for their schools, for the NCAA, and for television networks, while pocketing only a chance at a four-year education .... The NCAA clings to the romantic image of students wearing letterman jackets and smiles without acknowledging that the entire landscape has changed. In the past three decades especially, college sports has become big business and its profit margins remain remarkable because it features an unpaid labor force .... The NCAA is in the midst of a $10.8 billion TV contract. Most head coaches pull in seven-figure salaries .... And the NCAA executives are resting their heads on pillows of cash every night .... Essentially, everyone is getting paid handsomely except the ones doing the heavy lifting. And therein lies the crux of the NCAA's position. The student-athletes are compensated with an education, the value of which pales in comparison with the dollars they bring to their universities."

There's more to the story. At the start of each school year, college athletes are required to sign an NCAA agreement which stipulates that the athletes will not accept payment of any kind for their athletic performance, for rebroadcasts of games in which they participate, even for the use of their images in video games. This, because the students are regarded as "amateurs", thus forbidden from recompense.

Further, each athletic scholarship is valid for one year only, as opposed to the standard four-year academic scholarship. Should the student athlete fail in any way to come through for the team, he or she faces the prospect of no scholarship the following year. The alleged reward for all that pressure and hard work is the possibility of signing with a professional ball team upon (or even before) graduation. But there are only so many openings each year among professional teams, so the percentage of college players who make the cut is small.

The icing on the cake is that most schools do not impose academic standards upon their players. The Frontline segment reveals that of the teams participating in this year's March Madness, most include players with failing grades. Am I missing something, or isn't the purpose of a university education precisely that -- education? Small wonder that anywhere between 20 and 60 percent of college athletes fail to graduate.

Returning to the Washington Post -- "The NCAA is a non-profit organization and enjoys tax-exempt status. It could hand its hat in good conscience on the notion of amateurism 50 years ago, when the cost of an education might have matched the revenue generated by its student athletes. But it's now in the business of signing billion-dollar contracts and paying everyone except the stars of the show, a point Frontline raises and [the NCAA] willingly ignores."

The whole thing stinks. I'm not suggesting that college players necessarily should start pulling in stellar salaries -- that would only play into the already lopsidedly-outlandish recompense awarded to professional players. I am suggesting that athletic scholarships should be good for all four years of school, and that the NCAA as a non-profit organization should undergo a Congressional investigation for fraud and abuse of its tax-exempt status. Further, coaches and NCAA officials should not be making more money than any tenured university professor. There are too many truckloads of cash floating around, with no oversight. I highly recommend that you view the Frontline segment at the link above.

NUCLEAR D. "D" as in disarmament. There may be many among you who remember the name Valerie Plame. In 2003 a news reporter outed Ms. Plame as a CIA agent.

The incident is portrayed in a 2010 film called Fair Game. The movie is "an action-thriller based on the autobiography of real-life CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame Wilson, whose career was destroyed and marriage strained to its limits when her covert identity was exposed by a politically motivated press leak --

"As a covert officer in the CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division, Valerie's work involved identifying the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the United States declared war. Her husband, diplomat ambassador Joe Wilson was hired by the CIA for a fact-finding mission as part of the investigation. When the Bush Administration ignored his findings and used them to support the call to war, Joe contradicted the White House in the New York Times, igniting a firestorm of controversy."

Valerie Plame has not gone away. In an introduction to the DVD release of the film, she appears with an appeal for all viewers to become involved in pushing our government to follow through with the START treaty, and become informed on the broad issue of nuclear disarmament. You can start by checking out the website Take Part. The threat of global nuclear annihilation is a terror my generation grew up with. There is no rational reason for either the U.S. or Russia to continue to stockpile enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth many times over.

MILEPOST. This blog was initiated in February 2008. Records of visitation began in March 2009. Naturally, at first the numbers were miniscule. During the past year, however, the number of readers has increased exponentially (see first graph below, showing the past thirteen months' readership -- click to enlarge). I attribute the increase in part to word of mouth, in part to readers' finding the blog through web search engines such as Google, and in part to my posting each day's entry on my Facebook news feed, starting a few months ago. In all, I've written 897 daily entries, including this one.

As of this writing, I've had 40,005 visitors from 173 nations since records commenced. In March of 2010, I had slightly over 500 visitors the entire month. A year later, I had just shy of that number (499) in a single day -- on 24 March 2011. March was also the first month in which the number of visitors topped 12,000.

Within the geometric increase over time, there is a clear pattern of more visitors during the week, and fewer on weekends (see second graph below, showing the past thirty days' readership).

I want to take this moment to thank every reader who has graced this page with your interest and attention, whether or not you agree with my sometimes-outspoken opinions. Please return, and please continue to spread the word. I encourage all readers to become public followers, by signing on at the "Followers" widget in the right-side column. Peace.

COMPETITION / VISUALS

COMPETITION. In sports, in business, in military preparedness, even in the search for a mate, staying competitive is accepted as an essential premise. Here are two very different takes on that assumption, set within the world of economics and trade. Each has its merits.

On a global scale, Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, issues a warning -- Danger: America Is Losing Its Competitive Edge In Innovation. His central premise is that "the path to success is paved with science and engineering. In fact, scientists and engineers are celebrities in most countries. They're not seen as geeks or misfits, as they too often are in the U.S., but rather as society's leaders and innovators. In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers. In the U.S., almost no scientists or engineers are engaged in high-level politics, and there is a virtual absence of engineers in our public policy debates .... Part of the problem is the lack of priority U.S. parents place on core education. But there are also problems inherent in our public education system. We simply don't have enough qualified math and science teachers .... Here we are in a flattening world, where innovation is the key to success, and we are failing to give our young people the tools they need to compete. Many countries are doing a much better job .... The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. #48 in quality of science and math education .... Global leadership is not a birthright. Despite what many Americans believe, our nation does not possess an innate knack for greatness. Greatness must be worked for and won by each new generation. Right now that is not happening."

On a national scale, economist Paul Krugman in The Competition Myth maintains that "talking about 'competitiveness' as a goal is fundamentally misleading. At best, it's a misdiagnosis of our problems. At worst, it could lead to policies based on the false idea that what's good for corporations is good for America .... Consider: A corporate leader who increases profits by slashing his work force is thought to be successful. Well, that's more or less what has happened in America recently -- employment is way down, but profits are hitting new records. Who, exactly, considers this economic success?"

I'm inclined to agree with both writers. A comprehensive liberal education, with training in the sciences, math, the arts, literature and language, is a fundamental necessity for all the world's children -- not merely to help them to become more competitive (or to help them make their respective nations more competitive), but more importantly to help them to become informed and intelligent world citizens. And a realignment of our priorities toward a more just and equitable distribution of wealth is critical. When 1 percent of a nation's population controls 95 percent of its wealth and resources, the situation is ripe for revolution.

VISUALS. Again, two contributions. First is a stunning video showing highlights from photographer Bruce Dale's 35 year career with National Geographic (the creme de la creme of all professional photography assignments). The video is narrated by Dale.

Second is a jaw-dropping video from a Russian motorcycle rider's viewpoint, as he navigates morning rush hour traffic on a high-performance bike. He seems to reach speeds of near-escape velocity as he whitelines his way between lanes of traffic, squeezing through spaces the viewer would swear were too tiny. The rider is either barking mad, or has been playing too many video games in which crashes result in no pain or death. I do not endorse his mania, but I have to admit his skill as he threads through one impossible needle eye after another. See what you think. (Lane splitting is much more common in Europe than it is in the U.S.)

SCHOOL FAILURES / CREATIVE THINKING

SCHOOL FAILURE. If anyone doubts that U.S. public and private schools are producing functional illiterates, you have only to refer to the latest (2009) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report. As reported in most national news media, "Performance of U.S. 15-year olds in reading, mathematics, and science literacy in an international context shows the U.S. now ranks 25th in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading out of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. While OECD countries such as Finland, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and New Zealand continue to outpace the U.S. in reading, science, and math, all eyes are on China, in its first year to be included in the study as a non-OECD education system, Shanghai ranked first in all three categories. Hong Kong came in second in reading and science and third in math."

What accounts for this abyssmal mediocrity among U.S. students? Our children are as intelligent as those in any other country. Economic advantage plays only a marginal role, since many of the highest performers come from poorer countries. The key difference is each country's educational system itself, and the high (or low) regard which each country's people place on education. In China, children are already adept at academic skills (including speaking fluent English) by the time they reach first grade. On average, Chinese students attend 41 more days of school every year than U.S. students. With some in school on weekends, it amounts to 30% more hours of instruction every year.

In Finland, every elementary and secondary school teacher must have a master's degree. In the U.S., barely half do. In Finland, students have studied three foreign languages, as well as physics and chemistry, by 7th grade. In the U.S., very few in that age group can even speak adequate English. The humiliating comparisons go on and on.

The key, according to one analyst, is to galvanize public support for education, much as President John F. Kennedy did in the early 1960s. "The U.S. should focus on recruiting and supporting talented teachers in order to catch up to the rest of the world. In the United States, our system far too often fails to provide meaningful evaluation and incentives for the most effective teachers to teach the most challenged students .... What the PISA tells us is that if you don't make smart investments in teachers, respect them or involve them in decision-making, as the top-performing countries do, students pay the price." I've been saying this for years.

And if students pay the price, so does the entire nation. Until we turn our entire education system around, we will continue to fall farther and farther behind economically. Every nation needs children and adults who are literate in language, math and the sciences. This is not an elective option. This is a requirement, an obligation we owe to both our own children, and to the rest of the world.

Louis Pasteur famously remarked, "Fortune favors the prepared mind." The alternative? "Would you like fries with that?"

CREATIVE THINKING. Puzzles. Riddles. Problem-solving is as ancient as education, and the study of how and why we perform at our best has long occupied those who study the workings of the brain. Nearly everyone has poked and prodded at an intractable challenge. With luck, we discover a solution through careful analysis, or through sudden insight, or more likely both. As it turns out, the process is lubricated enormously by being in a good mood. Benedict Carey reports that "In a just completed study, researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine .... Humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain's threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections to solve puzzles .... The very idea of doing a crossword or a Sudoku puzzle typically shifts the brain into an open, playful state that is itself a pleasing escape .... And that escape is all the more tantalizing for being incomplete."

As both a former student and a former teacher, I can only add, "Ya think?" While teaching, I always found it both useful and stimulating to jack up the mood with humor, or a goofy drawing on the board, or a playful challenge to solve a riddle. Get the kids motivated, and the rest is in the bag. Nice to see my anecdotal personal observations confirmed by systematic research. Now, what do you get when you cross Lassie with a cantaloupe?

PRISON FOR PROFIT / CHEATING

PRISON FOR PROFIT. Among the many evils inherent in outsourcing is the lack of quality control. While we usually associate outsourcing with the production of goods, increasingly state and federal governments outsource for services as well -- witness the presence of hundreds of military contractors who provide everything from food to paramilitary troops in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan (see my post from 01 January 2010 on the brutal excesses committed by Blackwater and other mercenary suppliers). Click on the map below to enlarge.
















Not all outsourcing happens on foreign soil. In this country, for instance, those convicted of criminal activity may well find themselves serving time in a private, for-profit prison rather than in a state-run prison. In my book, anytime you avoid responsibility for what should be a government-run operation (with standards and oversight provided by our tax dollars), and instead allow a private company operating at a profit to take over, you're asking for trouble. It is the equivalent, as one astronaut famously observed, of risking the space program and the lives of astronauts by sending them up on equipment which was designed and built by the lowest-bidding contractor. In the U.S., private companies (including the GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America, and Community Education Centers) operate 264 correctional facilities. The cost, measured both in tax dollars and in human lives, is far greater than if the facilites were operated, staffed and inspected by government agencies.

So it comes as no surprise, though it remains egregiously shocking, to learn from the Southern Poverty Law Center that a Federal Lawsuit Reveals Inhumane Conditions at a For-Profit Youth Prison. Juvenile inmates at Mississippi's Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, operated by the GEO Group, the second largest private prison company in the nation, have systematically been "forced to live in barbaric and unconstitutional conditions and are subjected to excessive uses of force by prison staff." Those abusive conditions include being raped by staff, incurring serious and permanent injuries from staff beatings, being sold drugs by staff, and being blinded with chemical restraints.

I spent four years in eastern Tennessee working with youthful offenders, boys convicted of everything from burglary to drugs to stealing cars to murder. All of their crimes were felonies. They had served their time in juvenile detention, and in the group home where I worked, were acquiring skills and mindsets to allow them to reassimilate into society. My official title was security officer, but I was also a de facto counselor, spending hours talking with individuals and groups (including gang members), helping them to find a different path in life.

Only a tiny minority of these wannabe thugs were irredeemably hardcore. Most were kids who had hung out with the wrong crowd (or were brought up in the wrong family), and most were willing to turn their lives around. I'm here to testify that the barbaric excesses of Neanderthal staff have no possible justification. It is those staff who should be in prison -- as well as their corporate employers.

Small wonder that I regard outsourcing with a jaundiced eye.

CHEATING. Crime comes in all forms, some of them nearly invisible. One pernicious form of wrongdoing has been spreading among our nation's schools and universities in recent years -- cheating on classwork and exams. A video making the rounds on YouTube, and an accompanying article titled 200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant, provide the details at one school, describing the behavior of the students of one professor. "In the lecture, Professor Richard Quinn told the class he had enough evidence from statistical analysis and other investigatory techniques to identify most cheats, but instead of handing the list over to university authorities for disciplining, he proposed a deal .... 'you can either wait it out and hope that we don't identify you, or you can identify yourself to your lab instructor, complete the course, and receive the grade you earned in the course." Those who chose to come forward were also required to take a four-hour course in ethics. By doing so, there would be no permanent record of their cheating.

200 students in one professor's classes. Extrapolate to the entire university, and to all middle schools, high schools and universities, and doesn't that begin to sound like an epidemic?

I truly do not grasp the temptation. Not once during my academic career did I ever cheat. The intent of school is to impart knowledge, and to test the retention of that knowledge through exams. To cheat in class or on exams is defeating the purpose entirely. It is small wonder that our youth perform abyssmally on standardized tests in the most basic skills (language, math and science) -- not only compared to students from other nations, but also compared to U.S. students from ten, twenty or forty years ago. Our youth are functionally illiterate. The system is broken.

We need higher, not lower, standards. We need teachers who are retained based on performance, not on tenure. We need parents who involve themselves in their childrens' education, every step of the way. We need administrators who back their instructors in enforcing a code of ethics. We need more, not less, financial support for schools from our tax dollars. And we need a society which itself models not only ethical behavior, but also a hunger for knowledge and discovery. Without these things, our culture will dissipate. It has already begun to do so.

CHARTER SCHOOLS / MARIJUANA

CHARTER SCHOOLS. In her usual penetrating style, Gail Collins discusses several layers of issues raised by the new film "Waiting for Superman", which critiques America's public schools, and appears to advance charter schools as a more viable alternative. It is a well-documented truth that over the past several decades, public schools have been treading water while schools in all other developed nations have been forging past us in reading, math and science skills. Clearly a major overhaul is needed, including (in my opinion) scrapping seniority, requiring all teachers to undergo annual re-training and annual examination of their teaching skills and currency of subject knowledge, and raising the standards expected of students, both for passing a class and for graduation from every level of education. We are producing a nation of illiterate, math-challenged, science-ignorant underachievers whose greatest workplace achievement may be learning to say "Would you like fries with that?"

However, charter schools are a questionable alternative. While they may have value as laboratories for new ideas, their performance has been dismal. Unregulated and unencumbered by universal standards, only 17 percent of charter schools do a better job than the comparable local public school. In Texas, only 37 percent of charter school students passed state academic achievement tests, compared with 80 percent of public school students.

Collins is right -- "the regular public schools are where American education has to be saved." Here is her complete essay. It should be required reading for all educators, school boards and legislators.

MARIJUANA. In case you've been living under a rock, California voters will soon have the opportunity to pass or defeat Proposition 19, which would legalize personal marijuana use, allow local government to regulate the production and sale of marijuana, and allow local government to impose taxes on same. We as a society do move at a glacial pace, with no discernable distinction between rational thought and emotional panic, over certain hot-button issues. I've advocated for forty years that precisely this approach (legalization, regulation, taxation) should replace prohibition, which has NEVER worked. There is an Alice in Wonderland quality to our taking the saner path with regard to much more destructive substances like alcohol or tobacco, yet we resist that path when it comes to marijuana, a measurably more benign substance. Note: it is significant that the bulk of financial backing for opposition to Prop 19 comes from .... you guessed it, the alcohol and tobacco industries. When in doubt, follow the money.

Timothy Egan offers a tongue-in-cheek (and very informative) summary of the history and current status of marijuana laws in this country, along with his own pointed reality check. "Most of the bad things associated with marijuana come from its criminalization. If legalization curbs the violence -- of the Mexican drug lords, of the gangsters who still wage turf wars in parts of California, of the powerful and paranoid growers of the north -- it will have done society a big favor." Ya think?